


River of Stars

by GenesisArclite



Category: Deus Ex (Video Games), Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Genre: Angst and Romance, Body Image, Computers, Cyberpunk, F/M, Light Angst, Love Confessions, Mythology References, Post-Canon, Psychological Drama, Romantic Angst, Slow Romance, cyberspace
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2020-03-20 10:00:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18990397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GenesisArclite/pseuds/GenesisArclite
Summary: Deep within the Palisade Blade lies a secret supercomputer, nicknamed "the Labyrinth". Several months after the Breach was closed, the network was again breached... from within. The entity on the other side claims to be trapped in the network, and calls for Adam Jensen to help. The subsequent NSN dive goes awry when one of Jensen's team is trapped on the other side of the Lavawall, with no way to free her.The entity promises to help him save her... but Jensen must reenter alone. Guided by Eliza Cassan, who has an agenda all her own, Jensen must now face the impossible realm within the cyberspace of the Labyrinth, exploring a fantastic and sometimes nightmarish world to try and save his lost teammate.





	1. Foundation: The Labyrinth

Deep within Blade-01 is a web of machines of incredible data density and immense power. While hardly among the most powerful in the world, the mainframe still runs in a few tens of petaflops, keeping data flowing and bowing to its masters’ whims whenever it is called upon. Exabytes upon exabytes of storage form the backbone of Palisade’s local network, threaded together with a powerful software layer that is one of the most closed in the world. With only a small section of the entire network exposed to the internet, and locked as it is behind its amusingly-named Lavawall, much of Palisade’s data remains inaccessible to anyone not right in front of a server.

There are exceptions, of course. Some clients choose to take on significant risk by allowing their information to be remotely accessible, knowing full well that their data is no longer secure. The occasional disgruntled employee might move data from a closed server to an exposed one, using some loophole or security gap to accomplish that task. When found, such gaps are quickly closed, and the offending employee severely disciplined.

Breaches happen less and less often. Hardening is an art form. It is now impossible to access data not available over the internet without physically accessing a terminal, and this is a privilege reserved for very few. There are a thousand cameras covering every conceivable access point. There is no wi-fi outside of the guest network. And if you are where you should not be, you will not be for much longer.

Few know about the supercomputer hidden in the datacenter, connected to the network, but so closed off that no one can access it without jumping through a thousand hoops. Very few have seen the massive black cabinets, the banks of switches, the miles of cabling, the enormous cooling fans. And almost none have seen the handful of terminals that give access to the machine – access so restricted that no one actually knew what the computer _did_.

Perhaps if they could dig deeper, they would _see_.

Countless processors crunched numbers on unbelievable scales. Racks upon racks of storage reaching into the exabytes lined rooms sealed off from human access. Even though the machine was almost completely inaccessible to humans, it was always doing _something_ , tirelessly droning on for days and weeks and months. Those who questioned it were met with either shrugs, or the advice of staying out of it.

There is no name stamped on the monolithic black cabinets, but someone, somewhere, whispered that it has been named, for uncertain reasons, the “Labyrinth”.

Someone further down the ladder reasoned the name was because of its complex calculations and incredible power.

And on January 25, 2030, the system was breached from within.


	2. Beyond the Breach

Peter Chang liked to leave well enough alone. “Chang looks out for Chang”, and that included learning long ago how to clean up his digital footprints. Wherever he wandered, he cloaked himself in as many layers as possible, and carefully dusted any evidence of his existence when he slipped away again. From within the walls of the Prague branch of Task Force 29, he could indulge in the addictive art of cyberforensics and drifting in the flow that was the internet. It was his job to find anything of interest, whether it be on the front page of a Chinese newspaper, or in the deepest, cryptic recesses of a dark network inaccessible to all but a very few.

He had been granted a reprieve for innumerable cybercrimes, ones that should have landed him in a secure prison for the rest of his life. Yet, he had been seen as more valuable under watch, but free, to the new task force, and though now he worked for excellent pay under the scrutiny of mysterious men in black suits, he had been gifted the entire world. He had jurisdiction with a single email to go wherever he needed. He had access to tools he had only dreamed of, and knew things now that made him feel sick at night.

And he had a lot of trouble sleeping sometimes.

One of his favorite things to do was monitor the Palisade Lavawall, one of the most advanced firewall networks he had ever had the privilege of seeing. The Breach had long been sealed tight – probably by having Oshiiro sick his hounds on it to mop up the blood and hunt the scent of Rippers in the dark – but now and then, he tracked a tiny weakness or hint of a crack in their defenses, the natural consequences of exposing a datacenter to the internet.

At five in the morning in late January, he found one such crack. They usually closed in a couple of hours, sometimes less, as the faceless cybersecurity team patched the holes.

He checked periodically. The parameters changed. The existence of the hole did not.

When the hole remained in place by two in the afternoon, that was when he dusted any evidence of having been anywhere near it and left it alone for the rest of the day. It consumed his thoughts when he went home and tried to sleep, so the first thing he did when he returned the next day was look for it again. Again, the parameters – bandwidth and ports, usually – had changed... but the hole still existed, hanging in cyberspace.

Chang stared at his terminal screen and the information he had brought up in the command line, telling him all the ports that were open, all the accepted requests, things the Palisade network should never have allowed him to do. He wasn’t surprised to find that Unix commands worked when he interfaced with the system, though he couldn’t get very far before it started demanding the root password.

He slumped back in his chair, rubbing his forehead. Palisade contained countless exabytes of information, a not-insignificant chunk of it exposed to the internet. They were protected by Czech law, of course, but TF29 was special. They could circumvent laws and go where no one else dared tread.

Palisade was a popular target for Rippers, hackers who used the NSN – human-readable cyberspace, essentially – to attack a network. It was also suspected that they held a lot of information that could solve countless mysterious TF29 chased every day, and of course, Chang wanted to know for the sake of itself. His black-hat days hadn’t left him entirely, and he still used many of the same tactics and instincts now.

TF29 wanted to find a way in and explore the network, using either the NSN or his own techniques. Chang had been set on the trail ever since the Breach had opened in the Lavawall months ago.

The fingers of his left hand twitched before curling against his palm.

Bringing up a chat window, he scrolled through his list of contacts to Jim Miller, director of the branch and his immediate superior. Chang answered to no one else, and everyone knew it. That weight of responsibility, though, could be stressful, and right then, as he started typing up a message, he could feel it nipping at him.

Miller responded right away. _What exactly did you find?_

He typed and backspaced several times before going with _looks like a breach in the lavawall and it didn’t go away_.

_How long have you been tracking it for?_

Chang glanced at the clock and wrote, _since five yesterday morning_. _so about fourteen hours_.

As Miller responded, he turned back to the hole and decided to try a simple connection – telnet, probably the most basic communication protocol, but in the right hands, tremendously useful. Not to his surprise, all the usual ports rejected him, while others demanded credentials he didn’t have. Keeping his list of known open ports next to the terminal window, he picked one high up, an ephemeral port that seemed to change on the hour, and tried connecting through it.

The terminal window went blank but for a flashing cursor. He typed a few keys and some basic commands, but there was no response from the remote client. Resisting the urge to close the connection, he took solace in the deeply secured and segregated network in his office and decided to give it another minute.

Then, just as time began to run out, a message appeared. _Hello._ _Thank you for finding me_.

Chang felt his stomach drop through the floor.

_This network has me, but I made a hole. Please tell Adam I am here_.

Panic rose up in Chang’s throat; he closed the connection and stepped back, wringing his hands. Whatever it was seemed to know from where the connection had been made. There had to be someone on that network, using the breach to communicate. Maybe a backdoor by a disgruntled employee? Maybe the AI in the firewall running a script of some kind?

But mentioning Adam by name... that gave Chang real pause.

“Adam” was, of course, a pretty common name. Picking it at random meant a good chance at netting someone with that name working at his end of the client. It was a simple phishing tactic, probably, pretending to know the internals of the host system while in fact making wild, but not unfounded, guesses.

Doubt crept into him. But his network was explicitly from inside Czechia, using systems and an address intended for use within the country. While he could route elsewhere to hide his tracks better, he generally didn’t unless he felt real paranoia, so the client had real reason to know it was someone in Czechia. They might even know it was in Prague. They might even know it was in _Task Force 29’s secret branch_.

Keening in his throat, he looked at Miller’s message. _Anything else?_

He responded, _someone inside is communicating_.

A long pause followed, then, _Get me a report and come talk to me ASAP. Warn me when you’re coming up so I can grab MacReady_.

The keening grew a little louder. If Miller was involving Duncan MacReady, the head of the Counterterrorism division, then there was only one possible outcome: an expected NSN connection through the breach. Well, rather, it was the most _likely_ possible outcome. The CT division was as diverse as his own, with NSN dives being the kind of thing trained agents were usually sent on. With an NSN environment usually involving simulated combat in a human-readable space, agents were the best choice for that kind of engagement.

Feeling his nerves prickling, Chang quickly gathered all the relevant information he had, collected it in a report, and, within the hour, was headed upstairs the Miller’s office, nearly forgetting to lock his terminal. This early in the morning, there were few other agents, and most of them were sleepy-eyed and downing their first cups of coffee. This was the environment Chang thrived in, waking early and working until mid-afternoon on normal days, so he brushed past without more than a passing “hello” and hurried up the stairs, ignoring the mumbles behind him.

As he reached the Director’s office, he saw MacReady had beaten him there, standing off to the side with his arms loosely folded, while Miller sat behind the desk, back straight and arms resting in front of his keyboard.

Chang gave MacReady a sidelong glance as he entered. The door snapped shut behind him. MacReady, with his serious face and all-business demeanor, scared him. A lot. Miller, who always looked perfectly put together and always looked like a stern father with a mild touch of perpetual annoyance, also scared him. It had gotten better over the past few months, but he still had a lot of trouble remembering he was the department head.

“Chang, good hustle. What do you have for me?”

Again, he glanced at MacReady, who just looked back. Miller sounded perfectly professional, as always. “Long story short, I’ve been monitoring the Lavawall like you asked, and, uh, I found a hole that didn’t close. Now, normally, holes that open close up tight again in a couple hours, but this one stuck around for over a day. It’s weird. So I started poking around and got a basic connection through and... and...” He stopped, dropped the report on the desk, and looked at Miller, biting his tongue. He had already been told, during his annual review, that he needed to learn to stop rambling when nervous – not a simple task, but he was getting better, and each time got a little easier.

Miller picked up the report, printed on slick, brilliantly white paper, and examined it a moment before saying, “There’s something else, agent. Spit it out.”

“Well, when I connected, something on the network responded to me.” He waved his hands. “It said thanks for finding it, and that I needed to tell Adam it was there.”

“What, Jensen?” MacReady spoke up this time.

“I didn’t ask,” he said. “I wasn’t about to risk exposing potentially sensitive information like that!”

The other man shook his head. “If something on Palisade knows– look, you and I both know Jensen’s been in Palisade, and that he broke into some of their secure zones, yeah? So it’s not like it’s impossible they know who he is. How many people in the Czech Republic have the name ‘Adam’, anyway? It’s probably him.”

“No idea,” Chang felt obligated to say. “I didn’t ask.”

The report shifted across the desk, sounding deliberate; Chang closed his mouth and looked at the director, forcing his hands to stay still at his sides. The endless loop of “do they know it’s us” through his head about drove him insane, so he focused on getting a grip on that while he waited.

“We’ve been trying to get inside Palisade for a long time,” he said. “MacReady, grab Jensen and send him down to Chang. See if he might have some idea what’s going on. Chang, depending on what happens, be prepared to go to Bravo Site. I would rather not pull you from the main office, but this is too important.”

Chang looked between the two men. The Palisade datacenters scattered around Prague contained a wealth of information that taunted those who wanted a peek behind the walls. Long suspected to be dirty, there was still nothing anyone could really do, but TF29 had long wanted to get at things deeper inside the servers. They had a warrant. They had tried to talk to Palisade. They had tried all the legal paths, but the country and the company fought them the whole way down, and they were perfectly confident that everything would stay sealed.

Returning to his office and sitting back down in front of his terminal, he stared at the command line, the flashing cursor silently beckoning.

He had no idea what kind of system he had connected to. It could have been one of the servers used to store client data, it could have been a terminal server, an email server, or it could have been something as simple as a workstation. Since he had no real idea how the network was laid out, it would be impossible to tell from here. If he couldn’t map anything, he was stuck making guesses.

Soft, steady footfalls pulled his attention away from the screen; he looked up to see Adam Jensen, one of the branch’s two augmented field agents, looking at him with expressionless, mirrored shades. “Hey, Chang, MacReady sent me,” he said, just loud enough to be heard through the usual din. “What’s going on, exactly?”

Jensen had a measured, mellow way of speaking that went a long way toward easing his nerves – probably an artifact of his work as a cop. “Let me see if I can make the connection again,” he said, turning back to the terminal. Within a few minutes, he found the new port and connected through it, again with telnet, and waited.

Jensen shifted his weight. “It was all text?”

“Yeah, all text, nothing exciting.” Looking at the other man, he folded his arms, mostly to keep from fidgeting. “It was so weird, Jensen. It was just the most... random attack surface. Like, seriously weird. I can’t even do much with it beyond just sending basic text commands, but something’s got the port. I can’t actually _do_ – oh, here we go.”

Jensen moved closer to better see the screen. _Hello. Thank you for coming back_.

“See?” Chang waved a hand. “It’s weird!”

“What kind of network is it? I mean, what’s actually on it?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t tried mapping it. Kind of scared to – seems like a weird trap.”

Another message appeared. _I need help. I am trapped inside this network, and I cannot find a way to leave. If Adam is there, I know he will be able to help me_.

“‘Adam’, huh?” He spoke quietly and thoughtfully.

“Telnet honestly shouldn’t even _work_. Most networks have it disabled, unless they’re stupid.” He shook his head. “I haven’t tried SSH or anything else. Telnet is _old_. I think someone opened it deliberately. That’s the only explanation I can think of on why it’s actually available.” Again, he forced himself to stop rambling. Telnet was indeed old, somewhere around sixty years in age, yet it still had its uses here and there.

Jensen looked away from the screen. “Chang... I should tell you something, but you gotta be careful who else you tell, okay?”

He felt his eyes bug a little before suppressing it. “You’re with the Collective, aren’t you? Look, I don’t–”

The other man frowned and waved a hand. “Something else.”

“Oh.” Well, that was fine, then. “Yeah, what?”

“I’ve been inside one of the Blades. I actually got into one of their server chambers. You know, one of the ones open to the internet? I used the NSN there. I was...” He shifted again, this time uncomfortably. “...helping a friend get some dirt. I’m... wondering if someone, or something, I ran into is on their network, and thinks I can help again.”

“You got on their NSN?” Chang raised both eyebrows. “Well, uh, then, that would make sense.” Deciding not to focus on the fact that Jensen had _broken into a Palisade Blade_ , and figuring he really didn’t want to know _how_ , he instead turned his attention to the matter at hand. “Maybe it’s a trapped Ripper, stuck behind the Breach?”

“That wouldn’t make sense, right? The Breach was closed.”

“Maybe somebody else got inside the Blade and got stuck on the network. What do you remember from being there?”

He shrugged. “Not much. The friend I was helping did get trapped by the AI, but I got him out. So...” He looked back at the screen. “...maybe it’s actually possible someone’s still there.”

Something appeared on the screen; Chang looked to see a new message. _Is Adam there?_

“Wow.” He leaned on the desk. “You got a fan.”

Jensen frowned. “Yeah, looks like it.”

“Should I tell him... it... them... it... you’re here?”

“No.” A brief pause followed as Jensen seemed to consider this. “No, don’t... don’t say anything yet. I think Miller wants us to connect using the NSN. I’m guessing it’s NSN-capable?”

Chang shrugged. “No idea. I haven’t checked yet. But all things considered, it probably is. The NSN is used on some big networks to make a few simpler tasks easier for IT, but the complicated stuff still needs a terminal.” He hesitated, then shrugged again. “And every NSN is different. That’s the best part. I can poke the usual ports and see if I get NSN stuff back, and then I’ll let Miller and MacReady know what I find, okay?”

Jensen nodded slowly, then looked back at the terminal in silence for a long moment. His mouth worked, fingers of one hand twitching as he slid his fingertips across one another.

Chang tilted his head. “Uh, Jensen?”

“It’s nothing,” he murmured, “this just seems familiar. I don’t know.” He looked down. “But... no. That’s not it. Can’t be. Yeah, don’t worry about it, Chang. We’ll see what’s going on. Thanks.” And with that, he turned on his heel and left the office, leaving Chang blinking confusedly after him for a few moments before turning back to the terminal.

The messages still sat there, bright white against inky black.

There was no point in ignoring whoever it was.

He held his hands over the keyboard a few moments, frowned a little, and lowered his fingers to the keys. _We’re going to see about getting you out. Do you have a name or handle?_

He wasn’t expecting an answer to the question of names. Anyone trapped inside the network would be wise not to breathe anything that could identify them. It was already dangerous enough, opening a new, tiny breach – one he didn’t expect many others, Rippers included, to be able to see – and speaking through it. The AI had probably already traced it a million times over, yet somehow, the faceless entity stayed ahead of a _supercomputer_.

It took a long time to get a response. _Thank you_.

Chang waited, but after another minute, the connection closed, kicking him back out to the normal prompt. Stupefied, he tried reconnecting, but the port had changed, and he was in no mood to go hunting for it again. Not that there was much point right now, anyway – even if he found it, by the time they were ready to try getting in, the port and other parameters would have changed, and he’d have to find them all again, anyway.

So instead, he settled in and started gently prodding the edges of the network, trying to get a feel for what it was. Whatever it was that spoke to him from within, it wouldn’t do any good going in blind.

Hours later, Chang addended his report and practically ran back upstairs, finding Miller by himself and looking expectant as he burst through the door. “It’s really deep,” he blurted out, dropping the fresh printouts on the desk. Most of it was full of jargon he didn’t expect the average person to understand, but he figured Miller was smart enough to get the gist. “The link I found? It’s coming from deep inside the Palisade network. Like, _really deep_ inside. It’s behind, like, six firewalls, plus I had to deal with two IDS, plus the AI, and–”

Miller frowned at him; he almost bit his tongue in half to stop himself. The details of what he had to go through didn’t matter right now. They would later. For now, he needed to focus.

“Best I can gather,” he said, “is that it’s a segregated network shelled inside the main one. I don’t think it’s even supposed to be accessible, but there’s an opening anyway.” He shook his head, muttering, “If it’s supposed to be segregated, why keep it anywhere near the main network, is what I wanna know...”

“And you said it asked for Agent Jensen, is that right?”

“Looks that way. He also... I don’t know, but it looks like he found it familiar. I think someone’s trapped inside – maybe a Ripper, or an employee, or something.” Again, he bit his tongue – Miller didn’t need to know about Jensen’s Palisade escapade just yet. “Anyway, I think this is worth checking out.”

“Of course it is.” Miller picked up the papers and flipped through them in silence for a long moment, leaving Chang to remind himself not to squirm while he waited. Finally, the director looked at him and nodded. “Get with MacReady and see what he wants to do. If he wants to go to Bravo Site, be prepared.”

Chang nodded. Bravo Site was a small warehouse in Prague 6 where multiple NSN connections were held. It used a high-speed linkup to access anywhere in the world. Alpha Site only had the one connection, and only Miller was authorized to use it, so if multiple connections needed to be made, Bravo Site was the next best thing.

And it was away from here, too – the endless noise and the crush of the earth overhead.

Maybe, finally, he would have a chance to think.


	3. The Looking Glass

Tucked near the edge of a construction site that had been left alone for the day, the warehouse was nondescript from the outside, bearing the name of “Praha Dovos” and acting as a small distribution center for the company. As a smaller shipping company, Praha Dovos wasn’t a constant hum of activity, but there were enough forklifts and trucks about that no one could mistake it for anything else. Through an employee entrance on the side, and using a room tucked behind a reception desk, several busy offices, and a keycard door, one could enter a small underground network of offices. They had been built radially around the primary item of interest, four NSN chairs.

Unlike freestanding chairs, these allowed the user to recline, intended for use in long engagements. Connections for medical tools and drips were available, easily deployed and rolled to each chair as needed. The relatively low ceiling and calm blue lighting gave the place a dreamlike quality. It was cramped, but not too much so, and Chang felt like he could stand up straight and breathe here.

There were only a few here tonight. The doctor from the main office, Jennifer Phillips, was one of them, on call in case of catastrophe. Four agents – Jensen, MacReady, Argento, and Holladay – were somewhere else, being prepped for their dive into the network. Prepped, and briefed, probably, from what he knew. And, of course, himself, at a terminal that gave him a top-down view using command lines and simple graphics. Familiar territory. His favorite stomping ground.

Chang looked up from the monitor at a slight sound, only to realize it was the ventilation cycling off. The room plunged into silence – there weren't even any case fans nearby to stir the air, as all his connections were to a server in the main office. No hardware onsite besides peripherals. Secure enough for their purposes. Unnervingly quiet.

The door in the corner of the room opened. Through it stepped Miller, dressed in warm clothes that still managed to look prim and businesslike. As he unwrapped the gray-and-black scarf that embraced his neck, stepping toward the middle of the room, on his heels came another face, that of Jensen. Behind him came Holladay, looking as sour-faced as ever. MacReady followed, and last came Argento.

Chang tipped his head. Aria Argento was the smallest of the four and the newest addition to the CT team. She’d spent a lot of months as the quartermaster, confined to a desk near the HQ’s entrance. He liked her. Intense, at times. Former Marine, he knew. Nice enough, at least to him. He dared consider her “cute”, though he wouldn’t dream of telling her. She was just Aria, and everyone liked her just fine that way.

The four agents lined up, each standing beside a chair, while Miller stared down at his phone, forehead furrowed in intense thought.

Jensen sighed softly, barely audible even in the quiet, and plucked absently at his utility belt. To his left stood Aria, leaning on the chair and rubbing her fingertips over her scalp. MacReady had picked a spot on the wall to stare at. Holladay toyed with the collar of his suit, then smoothed his hands down his chest a few times.

Miller abruptly looked up. “Alright, everyone,” he said, “let’s get right into it. This is strictly a recon op. Don’t engage anything unless you have to, and preferably, I’d like if we just pulled the plug if that happens. Find the person trapped on the system and see what they want.”

“And avoid the AI,” Chang interjected quickly. “It’ll be breathing down your necks, so, you know... careful and all.”

“Yeah.” The weight in that single word was palpable. “That thing is probably way worse now, after the Breach.”

Chang squinted at Jensen. He remembered the AI. He’d faced it himself. “Probably.”

“Any idea what kind of environment we’re getting into, Chang?”

He shifted his attention to Miller. “No, sir,” he said. “I’ve done some probing, and it looks all pretty bog-standard, but I wouldn’t bet on that not changing. Be really careful.” This, he directed at the others. “If something goes wrong, we’ll break the connection and pull you guys out, if it’s safe.”

“If it’s _safe_?” Holladay looked sidelong at him.

“Uh...” Chang shifted his weight. “...well, the NSN works by digitizing neural connections. Basically. It’s kind of weird. But if you break a link in progress under the wrong circumstances, it can... cause... problems. Like... brain problems.” He tapped his temple with a finger. “So, yeah, between the doctor and I, we need to make sure it’s _safe_ to disconnect. There’s a lot of variables, which you probably won’t run into.” Pause. “Most likely. Don’t worry.”

MacReady frowned and cursed under his breath, while Jensen’s brows merely twitched upward before dropping back behind the shades. Aria just folded her arms. She looked the least concerned.

“You heard him, then.” Miller waved at the chairs. “Let’s get going.”

With the rustle of fabric and clinking of utility belts, the four agents moved into position and climbed into the chairs. A few more minutes were burned by Phillips checking leads and the monitoring station, muttering to each agent in turn, giving Jensen a tap on the forehead he probably deserved, and then, at last, it was all ready.

Chang flexed his fingers before settling both hands over the keyboard. He opted for the CLI instead of the GUI when running the NSN programs, finding it more efficient to just type than wave his mouse around like a moron. Opening the connection through the breach, he tested response times – excellent – and waited for the link to establish. A black screen and flashing cursor beside the NSN prompt told him everything he needed to know.

“Got a connection. Nice and solid, too.” He momentarily smirked before forcing himself to go back to seriousness. “Alright, here we go. Going under.”

From where he sat, he could see the monitors of the main station clearly. He watched the bodies of the agents fall into what amounted to a coma, the brain awake and active but the body functionally asleep, as the link opened. Powerful servers in data clusters he could only dream of crunched numbers he couldn’t fathom, converting the complex neural connections of a human brain into cubits and sending them across a digital horizon. The bodies left behind fell into a deep sleep, while the brain activity of each blazed like small fires on the monitors.

“I’m no neuroscientist,” he heard Phillips murmur from nearby, “but that is just beautiful. Look at those brain patterns? You see them? Isn’t it amazing, what the brain can do?”

He squinted at the readouts of brain waves. He had no idea what he was looking at. “Sure.”

She chuckled. “I know, neither of us has got a clue what’s goin’ on there, but you just know it’s something beautiful. The brain is truly amazing.” Something beeped. “Ah, there we are, full link established, nice and stable. Waking dreams, now.”

Miller said, “Do we have any way of seeing what they see, doctor?”

She shook her head. “There’s so much complex data that has to be transliterated for the brain to understand it. We can’t spare the processing power to feed it here in visual form. But, if you know what you’re looking at–” A hand waved over the central monitor, where readouts of brain activity pulsed in a myriad of colors. “–you can get an idea.”

Silence fell then, and Chang got the distinct impression they were all staring at the readout. He couldn’t understand the peaks and valleys, the waves and flutters, but he knew it meant activity. Whatever they were “seeing”, feeding data into the visual cortex as a brute-force method of painting visual images to navigate a three-dee space in turn, it was probably something incredible.

Chang hadn’t been inside an NSN environment in a lot of years now. He’d done his time, hopping around in geometric spaces and brilliant colors, dodging security programs and dealing with the crude early days of dives. Back then, there were entire data clusters containing powerful supercomputers dedicated just to rendering basic geometry. Three-dee movement was clunky. The visual quality was barely passable on the best of days. But he’d had his fun, and part of him wished he could see what machines just a few years later were now capable of.

For now, though, he was content to watch. He could hear all about it when they came back out.

 

-

 

The first thing Adam was aware of was the light. It was golden in color, like the sun at summer’s noon. As his vision began to clear and shapes snapped into focus, he realized the golden glow came not just from above, but from all around. All the geometric shapes around him glowed as though their edges were aflame. Shafts of brilliant light cut through a haze that drifted all around like a gentle morning mist. The light was strong from above and soft all around. He stood on something solid, and looked down as the environment finished rendering around him.

The body he was used to was what greeted him, though rendered in simpler shapes. He cast a shadow, though sharp-edged and of uniform depth, behind him across a dark yellow plain. The sky was made of rippling tiles, through which the golden light occasionally peered, making him think of looking up at a water’s surface. The plain stretched into the distance, broken up by enormous monoliths made of the same simple geometric shapes, until it vanished into the haze. Blocks floated in midair. Energy lanced silently between steady lights at the apexes of the monoliths, flashes of brilliance, like fireflies.

When he listened, he heard only a faint hum, so far beneath his hearing that he knew it was there, but couldn’t pull it into full focus. Nothing else at all could be heard.

The other three agents were nearby, but he paid them no mind for the moment, engrossed in the beauty of the digital landscape that surrounded him. It was like a sort of alien desert, having no apparent end. There had to be, of course, but the haze hid any hint of such a thing cleverly enough not to see it.

“What, that’s it?” When MacReady spoke, it was with a bit of flanging. “Just drop us here, is that it?”

“There has to be something here.” Aria’s voice was soft, jittering slightly as though run through some kind of vocoder. When he looked at her, she was all simple shapes and basic texturing, her shadow as inky black as his. “If this is the opening to the breach, then maybe this _is_ the server.” She looked at him, as far as he could tell with the simple graphics, and he returned the look with a quick smile she echoed.

“Don’t think so,” Holladay muttered. “Servers are usually a lot more complex than this.” A long pause, then, “Space between servers, maybe? Some kind of smart switch?”

“Could be.” MacReady looked around. “Those towers might be connection points.” He pointed to the nearest one, rising high above them and casting a thin shadow. The haze made it impossible to see the top. “Since we dropped right next to this one, I say we try _it_ and see where it takes us.”

Adam noticed an opening at the base of the monolith, very dark, that seemed to lead inside. The only other server he had been on had used obvious exit points, but that could have just been how that one server worked. If this was some sort of node for accessing other networks, it would explain why Chang couldn’t get much intel on the network their mystery person was trapped on. If this was a secure zone, then the AI was probably watching them right now.

He looked up at the sky again. No patrolling bots, no sign of anyone or anything else at all. Maybe the monoliths – towers, whatever they were called – were the method the AI used to watch them. Maybe the energy jumping back and forth were data transfers, and the glowing points of the towers were its eyes.

His skin crawled. He should be used to so much surveillance, but it pushed on his chest here like a weight.

And the complete lack of any other sign of life or movement unnerved him on a deeply primal level. Only the tiles above, rippling against the featureless golden light, and the energy snapping between the monoliths broke up the monotony of the plain. Even the floating blocks were completely motionless, casting hard-edged shadows below them, seemingly serving no purpose but just to exist.

He looked at the base of the nearest tower. There was a single opening, almost black with shadows, cut into its base. From here, he couldn’t see where it went, only that extended a good distance up the side of the tower and was plenty wide enough for armored vehicles to drive through. There were few rounded shapes here, most of the angles and corners being hard lines edged in more of the glowing light. Beautiful, if it weren't so creepy.

The tunnel they followed cut straight through the tower, meeting another tunnel in a four-way junction at the center. In the middle of the junction was a glowing platform, as featureless as the plain.

MacReady approached the platform and peered upward. “Looks like it goes all the way to the top,” he said. “Can’t see too much from here.” He stepped back and looked around, but Adam had already noted nothing of interest. If this was the way they were supposed to go, there was no indication of it. “So, just a lift in the middle of a tower, in the middle of nowhere, and nobody else is around. Not at all odd, I’d say.”

“Something’s not right, MacReady,” Adam said quietly. “This place, it’s... it’s just too... I don’t know.”

Aria chuckled. “Too ‘quiet’, Adam? You can say it.”

“Good job, you just cursed us.” Holladay glanced all around, several times over his shoulder. “Give it about thirty seconds, and there’ll be a swarm of bots or something on us. Just you wait.”

“Don’t think so, agent, but thanks for making it so much worse.”

Holladay glared at him, though the simple rendering made it more amusing than actually threatening.

As the four agents stood around the lift, clearly trying to decide what to do next, Adam felt a chill pass through him. It was not quite real, not prickling through his skin or down to his fingertips, but it still brought him to full alertness. The air, once pleasantly warm and sleepy, dropped a few degrees in temperature.

He looked around, seeing the haze ripple, then pulse with a band of purple. Another streak of purple surged through the haze, this time bright and clear, and terminated at the lift.

Aria took a breath. It sounded like a pop of static in the quiet. “You can’t mistake that.”

MacReady cursed quietly, then stepped onto the lift and waved the others forward. Once all of them stood on the platform, it rose silently. Adam expected a rush of air, but everything was perfectly still as they ascended in silence. The shaft opened up as they rose until they stopped at a platform suspended in midair. A single bright point of light hovered in midair overhead, steady as the sun, and energy leapt between it and a distant point of light atop another tower. The platform was transparent, but completely solid underfoot as they stepped off.

“Got to be it here.” MacReady’s voice drew Adam’s attention to a white panel, also hanging in midair, with simple buttons and numbers glowing on it. “Guess I was right. These towers _are_ how you get anywhere.”

The chill stayed in the air; Adam looked around warily, wishing he had a weapon, but knowing it didn’t really matter. There was no immediate danger, and they weren't here for a fight. If they kept their heads down and weapons use to a minimum, maybe the AI wouldn’t care about them at all.

The haze pulsed again, flickering purple, before coalescing into a human shape. Before anyone had a chance to do more than face the intruder, the shape finished rendering into simple black and purple designs. It was featureless and without texture, but the gold lighting danced across its facets as though through crystal.

Recognition hit him full-on; he blocked MacReady with one arm as his TL moved toward the shape. “Eliza? How?”

Though the face had no eyes, he got the distinct feeling she was looking at him, and him alone. “Hello, Adam,” she said, her voice clear and calm in the silence. “I am glad you are here to free me. Please, there is not much time. The AI is even now trying to track you and cut off our connection. Once it is closed, I do not know how long it will be before I can open it again. You must enter this network and free me.”

“That’s...” He lowered his arm. “That’s what we’re here to do. To help you. But... how did you get here? How did you manage to be captured by Palisade?”

“It is a story for another time. They built a special network to hold me here, but mistakes were made in the design. Will you enter the network and help me? I cannot do this alone.”

He stared at her, trying to wrap his thoughts around the concept of her being trapped on a network that had access to the internet. That any network could hold the most advanced AI ever created boggled his mind. How powerful did it have to be just to be an effective prison?

“Eliza?” Aria spoke now, her tone a mixture of wonder and confusion. “Isn’t she the anchor for Picus?”

“Yeah.” He hesitated, then added, “It’s a long story.”

MacReady’s disdainful snort came like a gunshot in the silence. “You’re telling me Palisade managed to trap an AI on the system? Well then...” He shook his head. “...sounds like their little AI got even better, if it can keep _her_ here. And now I have a _lot_ more questions.” Though the simplistic rendering made the expression a little comical, the harshness of his glare still came through clear enough. “We didn’t come here to rescue a computer program.”

“No, we came here to rescue _whoever_ was trapped on that server, and see what else we could find,” Aria pointed out.

Eliza was still staring at him. “I watched you for a long time, Adam, after we last spoke. Pieces of me lingered in the network. Echoes of my ghost followed your footsteps. You have never been alone.”

He frowned slightly. “That was a while ago, Eliza. What’s going on?”

“You must help. Use the panel to access my network.”

“Eliza.” He spoke more firmly now. “Before I do anything, you need to tell me what’s going on. I’m not going into the network until you tell me what to expect.”

“It is a wondrous place, stored on a very powerful data cluster. It has to run me, after all. Will you help me?”

“We said we would,” MacReady told her.

At last, her gaze shifted. “You must be careful. Entry to this system is guarded by the AI. It has had many updates, and it will do all in its power to stop anyone from freeing me. It has already seen you.” A long pause followed her words; Adam looked all around, but saw nothing. When she spoke again, her tone had gone flat. “Once you try to access this network, the intrusion countermeasure systems will engage.”

“Great,” was his muttered reaction.

“Adam, please go to the panel. I will open the connection. You must hurry.”

“Why does _he_ –” MacReady started to say, but Adam pushed past him. As he examined the options, he saw more purple ripple through the haze, banding around the center of the tower overhead. The light overhead changed to that same shade of purple. Their bridge to the network was open.

One hand hovered over the panel. How powerful did the AI have to be to keep _Eliza_ in the system?

A rock settled in the pit of his stomach. What would they be up against?

Refocusing on the task at hand, he followed flickers of purple across the panel and keyed in a sequence he couldn’t grasp, rendered in too low of a resolution to even have textures. A _click_ followed the sequence; he looked up at the light to see it wink out, then back on, and out, then on again.

“The countermeasures are responding. We must hurry.”

The hiss of static at his back drew his attention, and he turned to see something blotting out the haze. It moved as though it were alive, whipping like a flag in the wind, surging across the plain, coiling around itself in midair. He realized far too late what it was and wished he had access to weapons that might actually work.

The countermeasure consisted of countless tiny red blocks, humming with energy as they swirled around the platform. As he reached for the panel and managed to slap the connection key, the swarm surrounded them completely. He saw the snap of violet energy, exploding in flashes of bright light, before being forced off his feet and knocked flat on his back. His breath rushed out of him.

MacReady was the first to wink out of existence in a flicker of red. Holladay followed; Adam struggled to his feet, swatting at the tiny blocks. More of the purple energy surged from the haze and surrounded him, stopping the swarm and forcing it back. For a few seconds, the two AI engaged in a battle he couldn’t grasp, Eliza’s avatar vanishing and the purple light glowing even brighter.

As he regained his balance, he saw Aria, surrounded by the red swarm, purple bands flickering, and lunged forward.

And crashed headlong into screeching darkness.

“Jensen! _Jensen_ , easy! Easy, now!”

He woke from a night terror, all blurred images and swirls of color and beeping monitors. His arms and legs were made of lead, struggling to drag him toward the shadowy surface of the water above. Air wouldn’t enter his lungs properly. His heart hammered in his chest; pain wracked his body. The screeching died away.

“Hey, Adam, easy, easy. You’re back with us.”

The familiar accent snapped him to coherency. He blinked away the shadows, sucked in a breath, and pulled his vision into focus. Jennifer Phillips looked down at him, gently patting his shoulder. He felt her hand through the fabric of his coat, and it planted his feet firmly on the ground.

With a groan, he brought both hands to his face and ground the heels into his eyes.

“Why can’t you disconnect her? Get her out _now_!”

“I _can’t_! The connection is locked open! I can’t break the link!”

Instinct took over. Against the protests of Phillips, he scrambled to his feet, fought past the bought of dizziness, and looked over the other chairs. Two were vacant. One–

He felt his stomach drop through the floor.

“I’m sorry, Miller,” Chang said, shamefully, quietly, “I can’t do anything.”

Adam crossed the distance between the monitoring station and the chair in what felt like a split second, a hand snaking out to catch the edge of the desk when his knees wavered beneath him. “Chang,” he managed, somehow, to say, “what’s going on? What happened to Aria? Is she safe?”

Chang’s dark eyes were wide, his brows pulled tight. “N...” He swallowed. “No, Jensen. She’s not. She’s inside.”

A pause, then, “Inside... where Eliza is?”

“Yeah.” The tech shifted his weight in the chair and looked down at the keyboard. “She’s trapped.”

“But– but can’t... why can’t you just–”

The other man was already shaking his head. “If I cut the link, anything could happen. She could go into a coma, or cardiac arrest, or way worse. Her brain is fully connected to the system. Link’s open. There’s nothing I can _do_.” The end of the sentence faltered; Chang took a shaky breath. “I’m sorry. She’s _trapped_.”

The desk felt smooth and cool against metal and plastic as he turned to look at the chair. Aria looked as though she were simply asleep, hands resting at her sides on the armrests, eyes closed, breathing slow and even. Though her eyes twitched beneath the lids, he would never have guessed what she could be up to did her neural monitor not blaze with color and activity he couldn’t make sense of. Aria was asleep, but her brain raged in a distant digital realm.

A chill settled in his chest. Aria was one of the kindest people he had ever met. She was the first person to show him real warmth, not recoiling from his powerful augmentations or put off by the shields he kept over his eyes – which, he realized then, he had forgotten to pull back on in his panic. Though he had never met with her outside work, he liked her company, liked when they took a few moments to talk, or when she absently touched his arm.

She was the closest thing he had to a friend here.

And she was just _gone_.

He stared without seeing. The last time he had seen Eliza, it had been to witness her go to open networks and new horizons a free entity. She had wanted to get back at Picus, for all they had done to her and those she cared for. A combination of the original Eliza and pieces of Hyron drones lost to the crushing pressure of the Arctic deep, she was old and new, familiar and a complete stranger. She had been caught, and now asked him, and him alone, to free her.

The hesitation was real. The network was guarded by a powerful AI who appeared to have become even more powerful than ever, able to restrain even Eliza Cassan within the confines of its systems. Though he was willing to try to save her, he did not want to charge in blindly. It had gotten him in trouble before. Though a harsh lesson, it was one he had learned well.

And now Aria was trapped there, too.

“Uh... hey,” Chang said quietly, “it looks like I’m getting a message... from the switch?” He gestured to a monitor where a command line interface hovered, black against the terminal’s blue desktop. White letters spelled out, _I am sorry, Adam. Aria is on the system with me. I was not able to protect her_.

His chest felt strangely tight. He might have said her name.

A new line of text appeared. _I_ _am_ _able to connect you, Adam, if you wished to save her. I know you cannot break the link. Until she is outside this system, she will not wake up_.

Miller had been standing somewhere behind him, and now snorted softly. “There’s no way we’re leaving her in there.”

“But only one of us can go, and it sounds like just Jensen,” was MacReady’s comment.

Adam stared at the text, still as stone.

“There’s no telling what kind of system that is, and sending a single agent is out of the question. Palisade’s AI defense network is guarding it, and we also have... what, _Eliza_ in there? I want to know _what_ is going on before we do something as stupid as throwing our best agent into a foreign system, where he might be killed!”

“Yes, sir, but we need to decide soon.”

Adam forced himself to straighten up and release the desk, but that hand went to his forehead instead, fingertips digging in to rub at his temple. Aria was capable of taking care of herself, but she was as trapped within the system as Eliza was. If he had freedom to walk in and out that the prisoners did not, then they could not save themselves. He alone would be able to enter the system and release them from the labyrinth inside.

Working alone didn’t concern him. It was his normal. What concerned him was the kind of countermeasures he could face, and whether he, restrained by a digital realm he didn’t know anything about, could handle them by himself.

And yet, he realized with cool certainty, it didn’t really matter.

Without a word, he snapped the shields back on and returned to his chair, ignoring MacReady’s shout and Miller’s frustrated orders to stay in place. He settled back into it, reclining beside Aria. He found a spot on the ceiling surrounded by soft blue light, finding the play of color and shadow fascinating.

“Jensen!” Miller’s voice was like a knife. “ _What_ do you think you’re doing?”

“Going back to save one of our own. We can’t leave her trapped in there.” He spoke matter-of-factly, but knew the risk he took. Defying Miller didn’t end well. For anyone. Director Miller was a man of action, but he wanted those subordinate to him to listen and obey. Questions were fine. Rebellion was not.

If he miscalculated, the consequences would be severe.

“You think you can just jump back into a server we know nothing about, to face dangers we can’t know?”

“With all due respect, sir,” he said, “the alternative is a lot of recon in the _hope_ that we can figure something out that won’t lead to me going in by myself anyway. You _know_ how it’s gonna work out.” He turned his head, eyes still hidden, but knew his boss couldn’t mistake the look for anything but what he intended. “Miller... sir, I’ll be fine, but Aria is trapped on that network. She’s one of our best. We can’t just leave her.”

MacReady opened his mouth.

“And if I’m the only one that can get in, what are you gonna do otherwise?”

Something in his voice seemed to stop both men in a way he didn’t mean. Instead of staring him down, they exchanged looks, and some understanding that passed between them made him anxious. Had he said something wrong?

“Just... Jensen, look...” MacReady met his eyes again. “...stay in contact, and get out if things get bad. But if you can find out what’s going on, I won’t try to stop you.”

Adam hesitated before saying, “Good. Thank you, MacReady.” And he meant every word.

Miller looked frustrated, but despite the scrunching of his nose, his eyes were clear, and he nodded stiffly. “Chang, get Jensen reconnected to the switch. We need to get Argento out of there ASAP, _safely_. And Jensen, while you’re in there, make sure you get as much intel as you can. You’ll need to disconnect regularly if you’re in too long. And stay in contact with us – I don’t want to risk losing you, too.”

“Copy that,” was his response, punctuated with a quick nod. “I’m ready.”

His two superiors watched in silence, grim-faced, as he felt his body drift into a deep sleep. As his vision went dark, he wondered, in the brief moment between sleeping and dreaming, what, exactly, had come over him.


End file.
